Thursday, February 9, 2017

A Plea for Policy Change to Amazon's Jeff Bezos

Dear readers,

Please excuse my indulgence in this post, but I sent the following letter today to Amazon's founder, chairman, and CEO, Jeff Bezos, and wanted to also post it here since it discusses an absurd and counterproductive Amazon policy that affects every single writer who uses Amazon Author Pages to promote their work, and because it partly involves Hasslein Books' titles. I tend to doubt my letter will change anything, but I firmly believe that it's always worth trying. If you're an author, I recommend you let Amazon know how you feel about their policy as well.

—Rich Handley

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Dear Mr. Bezos,

I write to you today to express concern about
a pair of emails I received regarding my Amazon Author Page.
Recently, I've been adding books to my page for which I've contributed substantial
amounts of writing, in an effort to make it easier for readers to find my work.
Today, I added Planet of the Apes Archive Vol. 1: Terror on the Planet of the Apes to my page, for which I penned both the foreword and the afterword. After doing
so, I received an email informing me that although the book would be added, Amazon
has a policy of not listing books on Author Pages for those who have written foreword, introductions or afterwords, and that herein, no further such books
would be listed on my page.

I politely protested this policy, but
received another email repeating the rule. With all due respect, your company's
reasoning on this matter is flawed. Here's why:

For every book on my Amazon Author Page for
which I'm listed as an editor, I'm also one of the writers. I don't list any
books on my page for which I am only the editor and not one of the authors, such
as those put out by my independent publishing company, Hasslein Books. For
example, I'm the editor of Total Immersion: The Comprehensive Unauthorized Red Dwarf Encyclopedia,
but not the author. Hence, although I have an editor credit on the book's
landing page, it's not included on my Amazon Author Page since I don't take
credit for others' work. On the other hand, I'm both an editor and an author of
The Sacred Scrolls: Comics on the Planetof the Apes.
Hence, it's listed on my Amazon Author Page, as it should be.

So far, your staff have been quite helpful
and friendly, and have added all of the books I've asked them to add. But given
today's emails, that's apparently no longer going to be the case. That's a
problem for me, as there are several unannounced books for which I've been both
an editor and an author as well, but which I won't be able to include on my Author
Page now, once the publishers announce them. This is going to majorly dampen my
enthusiasm when those volumes come out. In fact, it applies to a majority of
the books to which I've contributed.For Planet of the Apes: Tales from the Forbidden Zone, for example, my co-editor and I
conceived of the project, brought it to Titan Books and 20th Century
Fox, hired all of the authors, and then each wrote more than 40 pages (a short
story and an introduction). I'm one of the book's seventeen authors. But
because I'm listed on Amazon as the editor and my co-editor is listed as an
author due to how the publisher set up the landing page, your policy would
dictate that I wouldn't be allowed to have it on my Author Page, yet he would.
How is that a working system? How does that make sense?

The same problem applies to all of my Planet
of the Apes and Star Wars books
from Sequart—I co-edited each of them, but I am also one of the authors for every
volume. Each of these books is a team collaboration, and I wrote lengthy essays
that ran with my byline alongside the work of the other essayists. We're all
equal contributors. But if Sequart decides to list me as the editor while
setting up the book's listing on Amazon, suddenly I'm not allowed to have any
of them on my Amazon Author Page? Again, that makes no sense to me.

As for forewords, introductions and
afterwords to other books, those involve a good deal of writing and research on
my part. In fact, for the books from IDW and BOOM! Studios for which I've
written a foreword, an introduction and/or an afterword, I'm the only person who
wrote anything new for those books—they're all reprints of classic comic strips
(Star Trek, Star Wars and Planet of the
Apes), and I was invited to compose all supplementary text created for each
book, in essence having me present the strips to the fans. And in the case of
IDW's five Star Trek hardcovers on my
Author Page, they're actually reprinting my personal comics collection, and I'm
the one who conceived of the project in the first place. So how sensible is
your policy if I'll no longer be able to list such books on my page?

The thing is, I'm not trying to be
argumentative, arrogant, difficult or rude—honestly, I'm not. Your staff are
all just doing their jobs, and I appreciate how helpful and expedient each has
been every time I've asked to have a book added. They're not the enemy and
neither are you, and I mean no disrespect to anyone involved whatsoever. But
the bottom line is this: Amazon's policy is just too rigid. It screws over
authors like me, whose contributions aren't so clear-cut and black-and-white. For
the Titan and Sequart books, for example, my name is on the front cover of each
volume, and I'm one of each book's authors, yet I wouldn't be able to have any
of them on my Author Page, simply due to an arbitrary "no editors"
rule. It's a policy that is dismissive of what editors do, and it's as unrealistic
as it is admittedly offensive. I urge you to reconsider.

I use my Amazon Author Page to promote my
work, in the hope that others will buy it after finding it all listed together.
If I can't list half my books from now on due to some ill-conceived policy
about what constitutes an author, then of what use to me—or to any writer, for
that matter—is the Author Page? If a writer has helped to spearhead a project
from start to finish and has contributed many pages to a book, as I have with
my books from Titan and Sequart, how is that writer not an author? If a writer pens
supplementary materials for a book, such as an afterword, an introduction, a
foreword, a lexicon, or whatever else, as I have with the books from IDW and
BOOM! Studios, how is that writer not an author?

More importantly, why would Amazon want to
reduce its revenue opportunities? From a promotions and marketing standpoint, that
seems nonsensical. What could you possibly gain from making it so that I can't
promote all of my books at Amazon from a single landing page? Wouldn't you want
fans of my work to be able to easily find and buy all of it? How could you
possibly be better off as a seller of books if half of the titles containing my
writing aren't listed when people look me up? Honestly, I'm baffled by this.
Please help me understand.

Better yet, please consider making your
policy much simpler and author-friendly. I respectfully recommend that if an
author wishes to list a book to which he or she has contributed as a writer on
his or her Amazon Author Page, then let him or her do so, provided that there's
proof of that individual's involvement. How would such a policy in any way
constitute a problem for Amazon? It would mean more potential book sales. You'd
win, I'd win, your customers would win—everyone would win. The current policy,
on the other hand, hurts all of us.In short, I see no downside to letting authors
include foreword, introduction and afterword contributions on our Author Pages.
Where's the business logic in limiting my ability to promote my books that you
sell? Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from
you at your convenience.